Here are a couple of breaking news items that might be of interest:

A combination antibody therapy developed by Eli Lilly to fight COVID-19 has received emergency use authorization by the FDA. The therapy involves two antibodies, bamlanivimab and etesevimab. Giving these to patients reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by 70%. 

Lilly claims 100,000 doses are ready for patient use and an additional 150,000 doses will be available throughout the first quarter. More information can be found in this news story.

Meanwhile, the claim that the novel coronavirus escaped from a lab is “very unlikely” according to a team of experts appointed by the World Health Organization. The group spent several weeks in the Chinese city of Wuhan seeking clues about the origins of COVID-19. (more…)

We’re excited to share the latest video in our COVID-19 series that explains how animals are helping us defeat the novel coronavirus. 

The new clip is titled “How Animal Research Led to Two COVID-19 Vaccines in Record Time”. We’ve uploaded it to both YouTube and Vimeo. You can find it on AMP’s pages at those two websites. Or, you could simply find them in AMP’s COVID-19 resources. Here’s the link.

We invite you to share this latest video via social media or embed it at your own website. 

Moderna announced today that testing has shown its coronavirus vaccine is more than 94.5 percent effective. The data is based on early results of a continuing study. At the same time, experts say at best, the vaccine would not be widely available until spring.

Moderna is the second company to report successful preliminary data in the past few weeks. On November 9, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their vaccine candidate was over 90 percent effective. 

Animal rights groups have falsely suggested Moderna’s vaccine “skipped” animal tests in its development. However, as AMP explains in our coronavirus FAQ, there is plenty of data and documentation that show animal studies did indeed lead to the development of the vaccine candidate. 

The Food and Drug Administration has said coronavirus vaccines should be at least 50 percent effective to be approved.

More information can be found in this announcement from the National Institutes of Health and also in this New York Times story.  

Researchers at Georgia Tech University have released a new COVID-19 Risk Assessment Planning Tool to gauge the coronavirus infection dangers associated with attending public gatherings across the country. The interactive website was designed to help policymakers, event planners and individuals determine the risks associated with group events throughout the United States and around the world.

To use the tool, go to this link. Move the slider on the left side of the page to set the size of the group you might encounter. You can then select a specific location to determine your statistical chance of coming into contact with a person who is COVID-19 positive. 

For example, if you were planning to go to a 25 person event in Chicago, your risk would be about 71 percent. That same risk for an event the same size drops to 31 percent in Portland, Oregon.  

The Los Angeles Times published an article about the tool. It can be found here.

The webpage itself can be found at this link. 

We have also added this resource to AMP’s main COVID-19 resources page.

Early data released today by Pfizer suggests their vaccine candidate is more than 90% effective in preventing against coronavirus infection. The vaccine is being developed in collaboration with German drugmaker BioNTech. Pfizer says their analysis showed the vaccine was able to prevent COVID-19 in the vast majority of volunteers who had no evidence of prior infection. 

The vaccine candidate underwent preclinical tests in mice and nonhuman primates. Those studies showed it produced “strong anti-viral effects.” 

While additional human studies are required, if the most recent data holds up, the candidate would be on par with highly effective vaccines for other diseases such as measles. In addition, the company says no safety concerns have yet been observed. 

More information from the New York Times: Pfizer Stuns Experts With Early Data that Vaccine Is More Than 90% Effective

More information from Pfizer: Pfizer press release  

Tuesday marked a day with several major COVID-19 events: 

• Another vaccine trial has been placed on hold. Johnson & Johnson’s study was paused due to unexplained illness in a participant. That vaccine candidate is in the midst of a 60,000-patient clinical trial. 
• The first United States resident confirmed to be reinfected with the coronavirus is a 25-year-old Nevada man. His second infection was considered “more severe“ than the first. However, the man fully recovered both times. This is the fifth documented case of its kind worldwide.
• Finally, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases today launched a study designed to determine whether certain approved therapies or investigational drugs in late-stage clinical development show promise against COVID-19. The ACTIV-5 Big Effect Trial will enroll adult volunteers hospitalized with COVID-19 at several sites. More information on that initiative can be found here. 

According to an article published online today by Science Magazine, primate researchers based in the U.S. are pushing for head-to-head COVID-19 vaccine candidate studies in monkeys. The scientists believe human clinical trials may not deliver the comprehensive data needed to choose the safest and most effective vaccines. They say the research could be done within weeks.

“We should take a cold, hard look at all of the data and ask ourselves, ‘What appears to work best?’” said Nancy Haigwood, Director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University.   

Dr. Haigwood and her colleagues at the six other national primate research centers are now turning to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for support.

The full Science article can be found at this link.

AMP Executive Director Paula Clifford and Communications Director Jim Newman were guests this week on Federal News Network Radio, a Washington, D.C.-based radio station and news agency. They spoke with host Tom Temin about the continued need for animal studies and how research animals are treated with kindness and respect.

Paula and Jim also discussed the importance of research taking place at the Department of Veterans Affairs, an agency which has been targeted by animal rights groups in recent months. 

The full interview is posted online and can be found at this link.

The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus pandemic officially passed 200,000 on Tuesday. The grim milestone comes on the first day of fall and brings with it quite a few concerns. Caseloads are once again growing in several states including Wisconsin, Montana and North Dakota. There are also worries about the arrival of flu season and the likelihood that cooler temperatures will result in larger numbers of people congregating indoors. 

In additional news, the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine for children may not arrive until fall 2021. Experts say this is the case because no trials have yet begun in the United States to determine whether the vaccines developed to date are safe and effective for children.

As an article in the journal Current Biology explained earlier this week, the COVID-19 pandemic is repeatedly demonstrating the vital need for animal studies. Today, Wired Magazine provided additional proof in a story titled “Making a COVID-19 Vaccine Is Hard. Making One for Kids Is Harder.“ Writer Gregory Barber explains how monkeys at the California National Primate Research Center are providing critical information to help us understand how COVID-19 vaccines will impact children. 

Here’s an excerpt: 

For those feeling lost in this time-bending pandemic summer, consider this frame of reference: the birthing season of the rhesus macaque. At the California National Primate Research Center, the first infants of the year arrived in February, just as the virus took hold in the surrounding area. The births continued through the spring, during which the virus surged and adult monkeys became a key model to plumb how humans might respond to the virus and vaccines. The last infants of the season showed up a few weeks ago. Among those stragglers, 16 were selected for an experiment: an inoculation with one of two Covid-19 vaccine candidates currently in late-stage clinical trials. It’s a first step toward answering a question that’s received little attention in that warp-speed, all-hands-on-deck effort: how children will respond to a Covid-19 vaccine.   

The full article can be found at this link.